We’ve collected the best Religious Quotes from the greatest minds of the world: Aidy Bryant, Lafcadio Hearn, Maria Montessori, Paul Kalanithi, Neale Donald Walsch. Use them as an inspiration.
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The new spirituality will also base itself on a third very large spiritual understanding, which is that life is eternal. Most religious people claim to believe that, but very few people actually live as if that were true.
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Descendants of New England pioneers are proud of their ancestry and glad to proclaim the fact that so far as the United States are concerned, New England is in deed the cradle of religious liberty.
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Religion is all good, but we are almost back to medieval times now, where we are obsessed with going into religious wars and electing our politicians based on their religious statements.
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The religious doctrine of traditional Judaism entails the acceptance of the nationhood of the Jewish people and the everlasting sanctity of the Land of Israel for them.
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One important theme is the extent to which one can ever correct an error, especially outside any frame of religious forgiveness. All of us have done something we regret – how we manage to remove that from our conscience, or whether that’s even possible, interested me.
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I can’t understand people calling themselves religious and being hateful. If a preacher is preaching hate, to fear God that’s not religion, that’s not helping humanity, that’s organizing an army to defeat somebody.
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I believe in God, but in my own unconventional way. We’re not affiliated with any organisation, and I have no religious education of any kind, but I definitely have my own kind of ideas about it.
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Doubt is part of all religion. All the religious thinkers were doubters.
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I’m not religious, but I do pray. It’s 60 seconds of meditation, visualizing myself, looking at myself, and being conscious of my own consciousness. That will align me for the rest of the day.
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I have my own religious bond with the God in my own head.
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To me, marriage is partly a religious thing and I’m not religious.
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During the crusades all were religious mad, and now all are mad for want of it.
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When the soul drifts uncertainly between life and the dream, between the mind’s disorder and the return to cool reflection, it is in religious thought that we should seek consolation.
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There is all the difference in the world between teaching children about religion and handing them over to be taught by the religious.
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When I visited Guantanamo Bay several years ago, I met a team of psychiatrists treating the detainees. When I asked how they distinguished between, say, schizophrenia or bipolarity and a bedrock religious commitment to holy war, they couldn’t answer.
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Malaysia is a country unlike any other: Full of promise and fragility. Its history, cultural and religious diversity make it a rich, compelling and surprising land.
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In the public realm, secularism should not concede a single inch to religious intrusions. To argue otherwise is to violate the meaning of secularism.
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Today’s Islamic fundamentalism is also a cover for political motifs. We should not overlook the political motifs we encounter in forms of religious fanaticism.
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Once again, we come to the Holiday Season, a deeply religious time that each of us observes, in his own way, by going to the mall of his choice.
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I think it’s a mother‘s dream come true to see it work out that way. Not just the mother, but certainly parents, to know that their children have a very solid moral foundation and religious foundation.
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According to this view, democracy is a product of western culture, and it cannot be applied to the Middle East which has a different cultural, religious, sociological and historical background.
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I am not religious, but I still feel there is a sacredness about Mothering Sunday, even when I’m just enjoying a lie-in and a cup of tea from my boys.
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Usually, it is not my habit to address religious issues on the floor. I strongly believe in a person’s right to religious freedom, as well as the separation of church and state.
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Convinced that the attachment of colonies to the metropolis, depends infinitely more upon moral and religious feeling, than political arrangement, or even commercial advantage, I cannot but lament that more is not done to instill it into the minds of the people.
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Dreams are where we visit the many lands and landscapes of human possibility and discover the one where we feel at home. The great religious leaders were all dreamers.
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I’m no longer religious, but the Bible fascinates me. Hardly anyone reads it anymore, but it’s got everything: it’s a book of poetry, it’s a book of principle, it’s a book of stories, and of myths and of epic tales, a book of histories and a book of fictions, of riddles, fables, parables and allegories.
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There is no doubt that religion had already waned under the onslaught of the Enlightenment, but it was Freud who provided the radically new understanding of human nature that made any religious explanation of the whats and whys of our personhood seem naive.
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I am very religious, but talking about it makes me a bit uncomfortable.
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I’m just not a religious person, not at all. I consider myself a spiritual person. I was always very drawn to Buddhism, Hinduism. I still meditate.
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Most terrorists are people deeply concerned by what they see as social, political, or religious injustice and hypocrisy, and the immediate grounds for their terrorism is often retaliation for an action of the United States.
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I, for one, am quite willing to join the ‘forgive, forget and move on‘ crowd, but it does make me wonder if Evangelicals are going to sound believable when they say that they tend to vote Republican because of their religious commitments to the family.
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‘God Loves Uganda‘ is a powerful exploration of the evangelical campaign to change African culture with values imported from America’s Christian Right. The film follows American and Ugandan religious leaders fighting ‘sexual immorality‘ and missionaries trying to convince Ugandans to follow Biblical law.
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We’ll limit in all ways the work of religious faiths which are foreign to us.
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It’s just better to promote love and fairness and equality than it is to promote something you think is based on your religious beliefs.
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I’m not religious, but wrong or right, that’s me.
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However, intention needn’t enter in, and if a reader sees things in a religious way, and the work is dogmatically acceptable, then I don’t see why it should not be interpreted in that way, as well as in others.
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We all have our pet things that we like to get religious about.
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When theology erodes and organization crumbles, when the institutional framework of religion begins to break up, the search for a direct experience which people can feel to be religious facilitates the rise of cults.
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I have the same sense of the power and virtue of knowledge that some people get from a religious background.
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I consider myself a religious person. God is something very personal with me and I don’t flaunt religion in conversation with others.
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The emotions that sustain religious belief are all, in fact, deeply ordinary and deeply recognisable to anybody who has ever made their way across the common ground of human experience as an adult.
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Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.
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The trend of all knowledge at the present is to specialize, but archaeology has in it all the qualities that call for the wide view of the human race, of its growth from the savage to the civilized, which is seen in all stages of social and religious development.
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I don’t think that the permanence of the individual human soul is an indispensable part of religious thought.
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I’m not a religious person, but I read the Bible many years ago.
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Religious and spiritual leaders should be held accountable for environmental activism, not only because they have access to large communities and can influence votes, but because service is integral to religious and spiritual life.
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I don’t believe in God personally but I have great respect for those people who do and different people have different religious views in this country.
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Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science. I’m not religious, but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It’s the one thing you do not ever do. You’ve got to have standards.
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Religious liberty should be a bipartisan issue.
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I also found that for myself, since I’ve had no religious education, it was so interesting to see the different versions of heaven and what life on earth means.
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Religion must mainly be a matter of principles only. It cannot be a matter of rules. The moment it degenerates into rules, it ceases to be a religion, as it kills responsibility which is an essence of the true religious act.
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Time to time I get together with the rabbis, with religious leaders, leaders of congregations, and I talk to them, and wherever a need arises, we do everything we can to meet those needs.
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But I wish to point out that it is entirely wrong to say that the Chinese are not religious.
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I am an atheist, and I believe that religion should not be in the classrooms; it has to be in the churches. In the classrooms, you have to form citizenship, not people with religious beliefs, that corresponds to the private sphere.
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Our Constitution recognises no other power than that of persuasion, for enforcing religious observances.
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As the culture war is about irreconcilable beliefs about God and man, right and wrong, good and evil, and is at root a religious war, it will be with us so long as men are free to act on their beliefs.
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A lot of the powerful religious leaders, from Jesus to Buddha to Tibetan monks, they’re really talking about the same things: love and acceptable, and the value of friendship, and respecting yourself so you can respect others.
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Self-denial is indispensable to a strong character, and the highest kind comes from a religious stock.
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I mean, I talk about being Jewish a lot. It’s funny because I do think of myself as Jewish ethnically, but I’m not religious at all. I have no religion.
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Faith is important, even if you’re not religious. You need to have beliefs in people or things.
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For as spiritual as some people think my books are, I’ve never really dealt with religious things.
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Justice is never given; it is exacted and the struggle must be continuous for freedom is never a final fact, but a continuing evolving process to higher and higher levels of human, social, economic, political and religious relationship.
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I hope I never get so old I get religious.
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I’m not super, super religious. If this is okay to say, I’m more culturally Jewish.
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When I was young, I was religious.
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The media seems to think only abortion and gay marriage are religious issues. Poverty is a moral issue, it’s a faith issue, it’s a religious issue.
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Religious freedom is too sacred a right to be restricted or prohibited in any degree without convincing proof that a legitimate interest of the state is in grave danger.
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Everywhere in the world there are tensions – economic, political, religious. So we need chocolate.
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We shall say clearly that any symbol conspicuously displaying religious affiliation in school is prohibited.
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I think we recognize as Americans there are certain things that are just primary to the freedoms and liberties that we enjoy here and religious freedom is one of the most important things we as Americans cherish.
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For as Jews, the problem happens to be more urgent and vital than for others; because the destruction of religion on America will involve the destruction also of the religious training of freedom; and with that our civil liberties.
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When does life begin? When does the soul enter? That’s a religious question. Science is not going to be able to help with that.
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A strong case can be made for religious leaders to speak out on political issues.
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Moreover, I want us to urge political and religious leaders, and all peoples of the world, to move forward in a conciliatory spirit, to deal with religious matters in a responsible and balanced way, and to focus on their common grounds.
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The notion of religious liberty is that you cannot be forced to participate in a religious ceremony that’s not of your choosing simply because you’re out-voted.
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I first began to read religious books at school, and especially the Bible, when I was eleven years old; and almost immediately commenced a habit of secret prayer.
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In Barack Obama, Democrats have put forth a man of strong religious faith who is comfortable connecting his spiritual life to his public role as a policymaker.
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The problem with Bush is that yes, he’s religious in a fundamentalist sort of way, they read the Old Testament as a sort of charter for the chosen people to do what they like.
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Once you attempt legislation upon religious grounds, you open the way for every kind of intolerance and religious persecution.
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Buddhism has become a socially recognized religious philosophy for Americans, whereas it used to be considered an exotic religion.
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As a chef, you need to respect your guests and their needs. If they decide that they want to eat certain things and not eat others, if for religious reasons or just decide they don’t want to eat certain ingredients, you have to respect that.
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The left and right are not religious categories. They’re often not even value categories.
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Certainly I’m a Christian first and foremost. But I do believe in religious tolerance and finding the commonality between all of us. I think that’s how we’re all going to come together.
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As a follower of Jesus, I am called to work for justice and reconciliation, and to be an advocate for those who cannot speak for themselves. I plan to focus my future work on human rights and religious freedom – both domestic and international – as well as matters of the culture and the American family.
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That man is a religious being, is universally conceded, for it has been seen to be universally true.
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I have a great advantage over many of my colleagues inasmuch as my students bring with them to class their own personal knowledge of national, regional, religious, ethnic, occupational, and family folklore traditions.
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I wasn’t brought up with any religion at all. At school and in my early 20s, I read every religious text I could get my hands on – Buddhist scriptures, Hindu texts, the Qur’an, and the Bible. I wanted to feel like something made sense to me, that there was something sacred I could feel aligned with.
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Of course the case of the Christian Church planted among the nations must differ, in various ways, from that of any sect forming in connection with religious awakening in a territory of professing Christianity.
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It is no coincidence that so many religious beliefs date back to times when no science could possibly have accounted satisfactorily for many of the natural phenomena inspiring scripture and myths.
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I think, as a secular woman who heads a religious party and lives in Tel Aviv, we don’t have so many problems on religion and state. Politicians, like Yair Lapid and Avigdor Liberman, are trying to create these problems for all different reasons and interests in order to get more votes.
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The first reason for the preponderant influence of those Evangelicals who define themselves as advocates of Religious Right theological and political ideologies is that they have both the financial means and technological know-how to make widespread use of modern electronic forms of communication.
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I definitely believe in a God and in a higher power, and I definitely take from many different religious cultures. I go to church.
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My first teacher… was extremely strict, mean, and deeply religious.
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Whenever there is a catastrophe, some religious people inevitably ask, ‘Why didn’t God do something? Where was God when all those people died?’
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Most religious stories and mythologies have some sort of similar root, some sort of global archetypes.
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Judaism is much more communal, and partly as a consequence of my religious switch, I am increasingly more suspicous of my previous view that what people do in the privacy of their own home is their business alone.
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One’s political views and/or religious beliefs should not exist in an impenetrable and inviolable bubble wherein they are protected from criticism or scrutiny.
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To make the moral achievement implicit in science a source of strength to civilization, the scientist will have to have the cooperation also of the philosopher and the religious teacher.
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Yes, I’m religious. God has shown me things, made certain ways clear to me.
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It is difficult to discern a serious threat to religious liberty from a room of silent, thoughtful schoolchildren.
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If you have religious faith, very good, you can add on secular ethics, then religious belief, add on it, very good. But even those people who have no interest about religion, okay, it’s not religion, but you can train through education.
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Focus on the mind and the soul. Read. Study. Enrol in a course of lectures. Pray. Become a member of a religious congregation. Study the Bible or other ancient works of wisdom.
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Many artists and writers have used cannabis for creative stimulation – from the writers of the world’s religious masterpieces to our most irreverent satirists.
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The three most important things a man has are, briefly, his private parts, his money, and his religious opinions.
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And the whole world, the whole world that believes in freedom, whether you’re talking about personal freedom, economic freedom, religious freedom, they look to the United States for leadership; and you’re part of that leadership.
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I was raised Jewish, my wife was raised Catholic. Though we respect each other’s heritage, and while many of our friends are deeply religious, we have chosen to focus on our similarities, not our differences. We teach our children compassion, charity, honesty and the benefits of hard work.
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Because of our sacred regard for each human intellect, we consider the obtaining of an education to be a religious responsibility.
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At the time I perceived most religious men, particularly the pastors with all their talk about love, faith and relationship, as effeminate.
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My generation, faced as it grew with a choice between religious belief and existential despair, chose marijuana. Now we are in our Cabernet stage.
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Besides the healthcare bill being unconstitutional and a great expansion of federal government, I think if it does not respect people’s individual religious views and makes groups or individuals do things that are contrary to their deeply held beliefs, there is going to be a visceral negative reaction.
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We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.
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The facts are plain: Religious leaders who preside over marriage ceremonies must and will be guided by what they believe. If they do not wish to celebrate marriages for same-sex couples, that is their right. The Supreme Court says so. And the Charter says so.
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Establishing an equilibrium between the Islam of truth and Islam as an identity is one of the most difficult tasks of religious intellectuals.
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As a Christian, there is no other part of the New Right ideology that concerns me more than its self-serving misuse of religious faith.
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Perfection does not consist in any singular state or condition of life, or in any particular set of duties, but in holy and religious conduct of ourselves in every state of Life.
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I’m not a religious person. But, when I look at a beautiful cathedral, what brings awe, what induces awe is the idea that architecture, you know, a beautiful cathedral, a beautiful building.
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All religions accept that there is something called ‘criminality.’ And criminality cannot be excused by religious fervour.
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What the Pope thinks of being gay does not matter to the world. It matters to the people who like the Pope and follow the Pope… It is not a reflection of all religious people.
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I see in the rising crescendo of ethnic tensions, civilization clashes and the use of religious justification for acts of terror, a clear and present danger to humanity.
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To be quite honest, I’m not religious.
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When I was 21, I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for ‘The Simpsons‘ who’d briefly joined a religious cult and then discovered Foucault. Such is life.
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I would love to get in trouble with the Catholic Church. I’m not religious myself, but my issue is with the organization. It’s an organization of men – it’s not about faith.
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Most Modern Orthodox are religious Zionists. Despite all differences and nuances among us, we consider the founding of the State a historic change. We accept it as something that came from Providence.
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For us, holding on to religious rules, and following them, and refraining from what’s forbidden, and being diligent with our duties, what do we call that? That’s what we call freedom.
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I think the thing that I admire about Rick Santorum is that he hasn’t backed down or apologized one bit for his personal religious views, for standing up for social conservative values.
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But I do think that we approach music, in of itself, with a religious attitude.
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When you have increasing power of religious groups, oppression of women increases. Women are oppressed in all religions.
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All religious leaders and spiritual teachers emphasize finding a place within us that is true. People who obsessively follow these leaders instead of their own purpose attach to the spiritual leader and become fanatical and controlling. That’s why Jesus tried to tell his followers not to get attached to outward form.
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It is from the traditional family that we absorb those universal ideals and principles which are the teaching of Jesus, the bedrock of our religious faith. We are taught the difference between right and wrong, and about the law, just punishment and discipline.
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Am I a criminal? The world knows I’m not a criminal. What are they trying to put me in jail for? You’ve lost common sense in this society because of religious fanaticism and dogma.
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As someone who escaped religious persecution in Lebanon and whose parents were kidnapped in Beirut, I fully support the protection of all individuals from institutional discrimination. That said, I am weary of the ethos of victimhood that has parasitized our culture.
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People get cranky when you burst their bubble. Over time, advances in astronomy have relentlessly reinforced the utter insignificance of Earth on a celestial scale. Fortunately, political and religious leaders stopped barbecuing astronomers for saying so, turning their spits with human-rights activists instead.
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Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma.
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My education was dominated by modernist thinkers and artists who taught me that the supreme imperative was courage to face the awful truth, to scorn the soft-minded optimism of religious and secular romantics as well as the corrupt optimism of governments, advertisers, and mechanistic or manipulative revolutionaries.
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The U.S. is off the spectrum in religious commitment.
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I guess my religious faith sustained me more than anything else. Family is also very important. If I didn’t have children, it would have been too difficult. Even if you are strong, you still need people who would support you all the way.
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The religious superstitions of women perpetuate their bondage more than all other adverse influences.
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The argument on the other side of special rights is completely bogus. It’s bogus because you could make exactly the same claim about racial or ethnic or religious minorities.
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I believe that nothing enjoys a higher estate in our society than the right given by the First and Fourteenth Amendments freely to practice and proclaim one’s religious convictions.
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Because there are now online databases of federally funded research, and these databases are searchable by keyword, sex researchers have to be careful how they title their projects. It’s become a simple matter, for those who are so inclined, to find and target researchers whose work they object to on religious grounds.
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I was never pushed into the religion by my mother or anyone else. I made up my own mind when I was old enough. I am not a religious person, but I am spiritual.
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Being religious means asking passionately the question of the meaning of our existence and being willing to receive answers, even if the answers hurt.
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I’m not religious, but I’m very spiritual.
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Bad religion is arrogant, self-righteous, dogmatic and intolerant. And so is bad science. But unlike religious fundamentalists, scientific fundamentalists do not realize that their opinions are based on faith. They think they know the truth.
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All my life I thank God. My family was very religious.
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My family was very open. My grandfather was German and a Protestant. My father, a lawyer, was Greek-Catholic and played the violin. My mother was very religious and went to church twice a day. My grandmother was Armenian. So I was raised with three different faiths – that’s why I am so open.
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The Indian was a religious man from his mother’s womb.
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A just laicism allows religious freedom. The state does not impose religion but rather gives space to religions with a responsibility toward civil society, and therefore it allows these religions to be factors in building up society.
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I was raised into the Romanian Orthodox culture by my parents, and most notably my mother, who is a profoundly religious and spiritual woman.
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A lot of people who are religious, I think they get lost. They go to church just to go to church.
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I’m a spiritual person and a religious person. But for me, it’s all a personal thing. I’m not someone who’ll say, ‘This is what I believe, and you should too!’ It’s more of an internal, quiet, grounded, fulfilling thing for me.
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I am against the word ‘anti’ because it’s a little bit like ‘atheist,’ as compared to ‘believer.’ And an atheist is just as much of a religious man as the believer is.
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Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.
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I am not a religious person, but I am spiritual. But I don’t believe in things like guilt.
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I’m in awe of the universe, but I don’t necessarily believe there’s an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.
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My mom is very liberal. She has never been religious… spiritual but not religious.
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As a preacher who has spent significant time in churches and houses of worship all across the country, I can tell you firsthand that religious liberty and freedom are principles that can never be infringed upon.
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From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man – the function of his reasoning mind.
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When many astronauts go to space, they see the insignificant size of the earth and vastness of space, and they become very religious, because they have seen the Signs of Allah.
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Allow the diversity to exist. There is nothing wrong with it. Hell, we put up with the religious right-we can put up with transgendered human beings.
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The holiday season can be an especially trying time for our service men, women, and families. Military service and deployment create empty seats at holiday tables, religious services, and celebrations.
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A religious life is a struggle and not a hymn.
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If a person is homosexual by nature – that is, if one’s sexuality is as intrinsic a part of one’s identity as gender or skin color – then society can no more deny a gay person access to the secular rights and religious sacraments because of his homosexuality than it can reinstate Jim Crow.
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My view on Islam is that it is not so much a religion as a totalitarian political ideology with religious elements.
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I don’t trust that the big-business part of our coalition is ever going to defend federalism and argue against regulatory capture. I don’t trust that populists are going to defend religious liberty and the rights of creedal minorities.
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That human behavior is more influenced by things outside of us than inside. The ‘situation‘ is the external environment. The inner environment is genes, moral history, religious training.
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Our moral, religious, and political traditions are united in their respect for the dignity of human life.
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Religious belief has made me comfortable with ambiguity.
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The liberty of the Press is the Palladium of all the civil, political and religious rights of an Englishman.
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In Holland, they have come to precisely the same conclusion. There they have adopted a system of secular education, because they have found it impracticable to unite the religious bodies in any system of combined religious instruction.
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Al-Aksa is a religious and national symbol.
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I mean, I really don’t want the federal government to be determining whether or not a person who feels certain ways about the environment or about animals or about certain religious issues should be considered an extremist. That to me is a type of thought control, mind control, which is very dangerous.
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While the struggle for religious liberty had proceeded without large-scale bloodshed in New England and elsewhere in the United States, the struggle for political liberty had not fared so well.
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The American Dream has always focused on building a better life for yourself and your family, striving for success, and even fleeing from religious prosecution.
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Extremism can flourish only in an environment where basic governmental social responsibility for the welfare of the people is neglected. Political dictatorship and social hopelessness create the desperation that fuels religious extremism.
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I don’t know of any cases where as a result of religious precepts a population have found themselves enjoying less food than they would have if they didn’t follow this particular religion.
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I believe in God; I’m not saying I’m highly religious.
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Remarkable is the greater openness of the Catholic Church towards people of other religious traditions and persuasions. The development has not been without problems, since some people have resisted it and others have pushed openness beyond the desirable point.
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I’m not a religious person. I’m Catholic, so I consider myself more of a spiritual person. I believe in God.
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I know that we shall meet problems along the way, but I’d far rather see for myself what’s going on in the world outside, than rely on newspapers, television, politicians and religious leaders to tell me what I should be thinking.
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One of my good friends is Christian, goes to church every Sunday, very religious. I’m fine with that and I will never judge her.
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I tend to believe that religious dogma is a consequence of evolution.
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I am a very proud Hindu. The foundation of my personality is laid on the teachings of Swami Vivekananda or Sanatan Dharm or the Geeta. And if my religious practices or anybody’s religious practices is given any kind of sadistic name, it instills fear about other person’s religious practices.
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I’m a spiritual person. I’m not very religious. I was raised Catholic, but I am influenced a lot by Buddhism and Hinduism.
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I do not want to suggest that you have to be religious to be moral.
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Well, in The Chosen, Danny Saunders, from the heart of his religious reading of the world, encounters an element in the very heart of the secular readings of the world – Freudian psychoanalytic theory.
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In my opinion, the battles over birth control and Planned Parenthood are primarily neither political nor religious. This is an issue of equality for women. This is an issue of women’s rights: Planned Parenthood is the most important private provider of reproductive health care for women in the United States.
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Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority – literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.
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While few religious leaders and scholars would doubt the commonalities that exist among the various religious groups, the followers of these religions unfortunately struggle in their effort to peacefully coexist.
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Life’s too short and too complicated for people behind desks, people behind masks to be ruining other people’s lives, initiating force against other people’s lives on the basis of their income, their color, their class, their religious beliefs, whatever.
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You can not divorce religious belief and public service. I’ve never detected any conflict between God’s will and my political duty. If you violate one, you violate the other.
339
Religious belief, like history itself, is a story that is always unfolding, always subject to inquiry and ripe for questioning. For without doubt there is no faith.
340
More and more people care about religious tolerance as fewer and fewer care about religion.
341
Religious relativism is not the answer to disagreement between faiths; yet relativism, and a blurring of religious distinctions, all too often result when two deeply believing faith communities engage each other in the public arena on theological issues.
342
There are many very educated people who are religious, but they’re not creationists.
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I’m not a real religious guy. I’m a spiritual guy and my religion is love.
345
I don’t think it’s any coincidence that I lost my religious faith and ‘manned up’ in the same year. I was described somewhere as a lapsed Catholic, which is funny because I’m not going back! I want to achieve things rather than live life in an animalistic way.
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I find it difficult to imagine an afterlife, such as Christians, or at any rate many religious people, conceive it, believing that the conversations with relatives and friends interrupted here on earth will be continued in the hereafter.
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I think most of our religious institutions are pretty corrupt, so they’re not reliable. I think the Christian religion that I was brought up with has very little to do with Christ, really, and more an institutions that have built up around the church.
350
Some of my ancestors were religious dissenters who came to America over three hundred years ago. Others were abolitionists in New England in the eighteen forties and fifties.
351
The Obama administration contends that starting a for-profit business means leaving religious liberty behind. The administration has effectively told the Supreme Court that for-profit companies have no right to act on moral convictions the government opposes. They are about profits. That position is deeply mistaken.
352
The conflict between religion and science is inherent and (very nearly) zero-sum. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science.
353
Mum wasn’t at all religious, but she thought that going to the theatre was as important a ceremonial, communal experience that a person could have.
354
I went to boarding school Southern, religious, and straight, and I left boarding school not being at all religious and not being straight.
355
I am proud of being a Somali-American Muslim, and my wardrobe has been an important part of my religious and cultural upbringing.
356
To assert that it is possible to establish peace between men of different nations is simply to assert that man, whatever his ethnical background, his race, religious beliefs, or philosophy, is capable of reason.
357
I was raised in the church, and there’s still a fire burning inside me. I definitely don’t ever want to be preachy. But less and less young people are religious. The thing is, I see so many positive things about religion, so I’m happy to talk about it.
358
Let them be reassured, it has never been one of our intentions to ban religion in society, but solely to protect the national education system from any conspicuous display of religious affiliation.
359
The astrologers and historians write that the ascendant as of Oxford is Capricornus, whose lord is Saturn, a religious planet, and patron of religious men.
360
I don’t believe in angels, and I’m not a religious person.
361
American Christians are quite able to organize around issues that concern them. Yet religious persecution appears not to have grabbed their attention, despite worldwide media coverage of the atrocities against Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East.
362
If God is sovereign, then it is impossible for civil government to be neutral on issues of law. All law is based in some religious code.
363
America owes most of its social prejudices to the exaggerated religious opinions of the different sects which were so instrumental in establishing the colonies.
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Puja brings lots of things together and it isn’t just about the religious aspect. Blessings from elders, family-bonding, togetherness… it’s about all that. It’s also about colors, grandeur and people coming together.
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Religious liberty is the first freedom in our Constitution. And whether the cause is justice for the persecuted, compassion for the needy and the sick, or mercy for the child waiting to be born, there is no greater force for good in the nation than Christian conscience in action.
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My parents were early converts to Christianity in my part of Nigeria. They were not just converts; my father was an evangelist, a religious teacher. He and my mother traveled for thirty-five years to different parts of Igboland, spreading the gospel.
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Whatever your religious persuasion, if you believe that that the universe is governed by benign forces, at some point you have to explain why there is so much suffering, misfortune and misery in the world.
377
The characteristic human trait is not awareness but conformity, and the characteristic result is religious warfare. Other animals fight for territory or food; but, uniquely in the animal kingdom, human beings fight for their ‘beliefs.’
378
As we get rich, the basics of life – food, clothing and shelter – become a very small part of total expenditure. And people have enough money to purchase things that enhance them spiritually, and I mean the word ‘spiritual’ not necessarily in a religious sense but in the sense that it adds to your feeling of well-being.
379
Let it be henceforth proclaimed to the world that man’s conscience was created free; that he is no longer accountable to his fellow man for his religious opinions, being responsible therefore only to his God.
380
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My father was very outwardly religious.
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The question confronting the Church today is not any longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the Gospel message.
384
Responsibility and respect of others and their religious beliefs are also part of freedom.
385
I wouldn’t say I’m a religious person, but I am definitely inclined toward asking the big questions.
386
What other nations call religious toleration, we call religious rights. They are not exercised in virtue of governmental indulgence, but as rights, of which government cannot deprive any portion of citizens, however small.
387
I celebrate everyone’s religious holidays. if it’s good enough for the righteous, it’s good enough for the self-righteous, I always say.
388
By respect for life we become religious in a way that is elementary, profound and alive.
389
Prohibiting a visible religious sign, which isn’t a manifestation of militancy, would look like a fight against religions.
390
Democratic societies can no longer give religious fanatics a free hand to abuse and murder non believers. Such action betrays contempt for the basic human rights which animate any democracy with meaning.
391
While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing – good for our political culture.
392
Beware of generalizations about any faith because they sometimes amount to the religious equivalent of racial profiling. Hinduism contained both Gandhi and the fanatic who assassinated him.
393
My mom is very religious – Catholic – and from a young age they brought me to the church.
394
My own personal, moral, spiritual, religious, etc. beliefs don’t oppose same-gender marriage.
395
The saddest part of the human race is we’re obsessed with this idea of ‘us and them,’ which is really a no-win situation, whether it’s racial, cultural, religious or political.
396
My childhood was limited to mostly gospel music. We didn’t have, like, a lot of records in our house, you know. It was like my grandparents who raised me. They were pretty old-fashioned in their religious ways, so it was like church, church, church, school, school, school.
397
I confess that for fifteen years my efforts in education, and my hopes of success in establishing a system of national education, have always been associated with the idea of coupling the education of this country with the religious communities which exist.
398
I’m not a religious person. My mom was of Jewish blood and my dad was Protestant.
399
It is a grave matter to enter a war, without adequate military preparation; it may prove fatal to come into peace, without moral and religious preparation.
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With regard to the moral and religious condition of the slaves, I cannot, either from what I observe, or from what is told me, consider it in any way gratifying.
402
I am a deeply religious nonbeliever – this is a somewhat new kind of religion.
403
I was very, very religious. And of course I wrote about it in ‘Night.’ I questioned God’s silence. So I questioned. I don’t have an answer for that. Does it mean that I stopped having faith? No. I have faith, but I question it.
404
I’m not religious in any formal sense, not in any God sense.
405
I have always felt that my work is religious, not sacrilegious.
406
During my first visit, I was really struck by how deeply religious many Oklahomans are. It is a very conservative state and as somebody who grew up in a very liberal country, it was jarring to me at first.
407
Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in molding life than nationalism or a common language.
408
There are men who think themselves too wise to be religious.
409
Burzum is not a political or religious band, or even an anti-religious band. Burzum is music – art if you like – and the interpretation of art lies in the eye of the beholder.
410
Since Courbet, it’s been believed that painting is addressed to the retina. That was everyone’s error. The retinal shudder! Before, painting had other functions: it could be religious, philosophical, moral… our whole century is completely retinal, except for the Surrealists, who tried to go outside it somewhat.
411
Caste may be bad. Caste may lead to conduct so gross as to be called man’s inhumanity to man. All the same, it must be recognized that the Hindus observe Caste not because they are inhuman or wrong-headed. They observe Caste because they are deeply religious.
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Some people, both scientists and religious people, deal with uncertainty by being certain. That is dangerous in the fundamentalists and it is dangerous in the fundamentalist scientists.
414
No, we are not the master of the state, said King. We are not the servant of the state. We are the conscience of the state. The churches or the religious community should be, I think, the conscience of the state. We’re not just service providers.
415
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It is true that the Chinese are not so religious as the Hindus, or even as the Japanese; and they are certainly not so religious as the Christian missionaries desire them to be.
417
You can’t divorce religious belief and public service I’ve never detected any conflict between God’s will and my political duty. If you violate one, you violate the other.
418
My religious point of view is something I can’t talk about. It goes against my belief system to talk publicly about my own spiritual beliefs.
419
I find it greatly disturbing that the Bush administration has used political and religious ideologies to influence national policy on science and medicine.
420
I’m not a religious person.
421
In times of conflict, war, poverty or religious fundamentalism, women and children are the first and most numerous victims. Women need all their courage today.
422
People truly reaching across boundaries – be they religious or race, political or geographic. A state that is sincerely civil and respectful of each individual‘s pathway toward life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness will be our goal.
423
Let’s say black, the whole black religious experience, here, is very impressive to me, because when I first arrived I realized that people carry their faith with so much pride.
424
We religious controllers control in the name of Jesus and it is really painful to people.
425
For me sport was a religion… with religious sentiment.
426
Ultimately, America’s answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
427
The supreme satisfaction is to be able to despise one’s neighbor and this fact goes far to account for religious intolerance. It is evidently consoling to reflect that the people next door are headed for hell.
428
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Adherents of the new religious right reject the separation of politics and religion, but they bring no spiritual insights to politics.
431
Military organization, like religious organization, can be seen as a paradigm of organization in general.
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I’m not religious, but by nature I am spiritual. I’m an artist, and creativity seems to go hand in hand with spirituality. But I have a knee-jerk reaction against organized religions. Actually, I have knee-jerk reactions against anything that’s organized.
435
The passion for art is, as for believers, very religious. It unites people, its message is of common humanity. Art has become my religion – others pray in church. It’s a banality, but you don’t possess art, it possesses you. It’s like falling in love.
436
Jackson was not a religious man when he came to Lexington.
437
A great power has to have the discipline not only to go when necessary but to know when not to go. Getting involved in ethnic, religious civil wars is a recipe for disaster.
438
I grew up in Los Angeles in a Quaker family, and for me being Quaker was a political calling rather than a religious one.
439
440
Though I am not religious in the least, I am very proud to be Jewish.
441
Religious poetry, civic poetry, lyric or dramatic poetry are all categories of man’s expression which are valid only if the endorsement of formal content is valid.
442
During the weeks before Christmas, though it’s not always possible, we make an effort to keep the kids away from shopping malls and stores. We also deliberately choose cards and decorations that have religious significance.
443
Unhappy, let alone angry, religious people provide more persuasive arguments for atheism and secularism than do all the arguments of atheists.
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448
One of the greatest gifts God ever gave to humanity was that of liberty. We love freedom and bloom under it. We cannot and should not try to force people to live by a certain religious code. To do so negates our free will.
449
450
The style of the Bible in general is singularly adapted to men of every class and grade of culture, affording the child the simple nourishment for its religious wants, and the profoundest thinker inexhaustible matter of study.
451
North Eurasia is one of the best examples of religious tolerance and peaceful coexistence of Islam and Christianity. This is a rare thing in today’s world, even in its most liberal parts.
452
I don’t think we should discriminate against an organization or congregation because they’re religious, if they’re doing good work. But government can’t subsidize proselytizing or worship or religious activity. It can’t.
453
The sight of nature fascinates, the family tie has a sweet enchantment and patriotism gives the religious spirit a fiery devotion to the powers that it reveres.
454
I’d never been religious, but I’d always obeyed my elders. My decision to become an omnivore was fraught, not because it was a religious transgression but because it was my first act of self-assertion as a young adult.
455
I’m very wary of large groups of people getting together and trying to believe the same thing. It never seems to end well, whether it’s political or religious or whatever.
456
I have never been religious. I talk to God every day, but He’s never said a word to me about religion! I think the most powerful prayer is surrender.
457
458
The argument that gay marriage doesn’t affect straight marriages is a ridiculous red herring: Gay marriage affects society and law in dramatic ways. Religious groups will come under direct assault as federal and state governments move to strip them of their non-profit statuses if they refuse to perform gay marriages.
459
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Unless one is a religious fundamentalist and believes that man was created in the image and likeness of God, it is foolish to believe that human beings are exempt from biological classification and the laws of evolution that apply to all other life forms.
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The United States may be a religious nation. But it is also a nation with a strong commitment to separation of church and state.
465
The Muslim world is threatened by religious fanaticism. The Western world is threatened by secular fanaticism.
466
The applicability of the Establishment Clause to public funding of benefits to religious schools was settled in Everson v. Board of Ed. of Ewing, which inaugurated the modern era of establishment doctrine.
467
468
There are quite a lot of YouTube clips of me that have gone viral. One that I think of is of a young woman at a lecture I was giving – she came from Liberty University, which is a ludicrous religious institution. She said, ‘What if you are wrong?’ and I answered that rather briefly, and that’s gone viral.
469
Indeed, one of the most successful and influential religious organizations in history, the Society of Jesus, was consciously modeled along military lines by its founder, Ignatius Loyola.
470
The world’s a mean place. It’s unfair, then it’s fair. It’s hateful, then it’s loving. It’s a very peculiar place on philosophical and metaphysical and religious levels.
471
Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.
472
Let’s not leave an educational vacuum to be filled by religious extremists who go to families who have no other option and offer meals, housing and some form of education. If we are going to combat extremism then we must educate those very same children.
473
Though claiming to represent a conservative form of Christianity, the Religious Right is politically a form of Protestant liberalism.
474
475
Instead of plotting the demise of the traditional family, as some politicians and religious leaders would have you believe, gay people mow their lawns and watch ‘American Idol‘ and video their children’s concerts and have the same hopes and dreams that their straight counterparts do.
